Monday, January 24, 2011

This sounds like Bob Fletcher should be prosecuted

for a number of things, starting with(not in any order of importance)
Just weeks into the new Ramsey County Sheriff administration, we finally know why former sheriff Bob Fletcher ignored Minnesota Data Practices requests for the 78 Terrorism Information Briefs he boasted about preparing and disseminating since 2005.

"They never existed," Randy Gustafson, the new public information officer for Sheriff Matt Bostrom, said in a telephone interview on January 19. "It is a very big lie."
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But that's not the only thing Fletcher falsified in this 2009 budget report to the Ramsey County Board, according to Gustafson
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Continuing to
Olding, who left his post a week after Fletcher was gone, didn't respond to the Daily Planet's requests for an interview. His 2009 salary, according to this searchable database on the Pioneer Press website, was $92,380.52.

Just how that public money was spent, and exactly how many people worked underneath Olding, remains unknown
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and ending with this, which particularly caught my eye:
The previous administration didn't exactly make it easy for Gustafson to transition into his work with the public. When he got to his new office, there were no files, papers or outstanding records requests left for him to learn from.

"Inside of the office there were zero pieces of paper," he said.

As the days go on, the suspicious history they're unearthing is a bit of shock, Gustafson said
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This caught my attention due to past history; in my former career it came to our attention that it was common that a sheriff who lost his reelection bid would be followed out by some of the dispatchers and deputies, and they'd all steal or destroy records before they walked out. Not just personal stuff, but LE records on arrests, criminal history inquiry records, all kinds of official documentation. Sometimes just to be shitty because they lost, sometimes to hide things they'd done; extremely unprofessional at the least, criminal at the most. Still pisses me off to think about it, and I still think those who do such things should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. If Fletcher & Co. did this, that's exactly what should happen to them.

1 comment:

MauserMedic said...

I sometimes wonder if sheriff's departments aren't more susceptible to this type of behavior, as many candidates seem to combine the worst attributes of politicians and law enforcement. Our previous sheriff, who was there well over a decade IIRC,had several ethics problems revealed after losing his elections. The new one seems much better, but one rarely gets much insight into a department unless something has gone horribly wrong.